Table of Contents
Introduction
About This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organised
Part I: The Basics of Anger
Part II: Dealing with Past and Present Anger
Part III: Preventing Future Anger
Part IV: Lifestyle Changes That Improve Your Anger and Health
Part V: Managing Anger in Relationships
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Icons Used in This Book
Part I: The Basics of Anger
Chapter 1: Anger: A Natural Human Emotion
Dispelling Common Anger Myths
Understanding the Role of Emotions in Your Life
Getting the Help You Need
Knowing You’re Getting There
Chapter 2: When Is Anger a Problem? Assessing and Understanding Your Anger
Assessing How Angry You Are
Defining anger
How often do you get angry?
How intense is your anger?
What triggers your anger?
Working Out Whether Your Anger Is Harmful
Episodic irritation
Episodic anger
Episodic rage
Chronic irritation
Chronic anger
Chronic rage
Calculating the Risks of Harmful Anger
Are you male?
Are you under 40 years of age?
What’s your temperament and personality style?
Do you have too many triggers to anger?
Are you looking at life the wrong way?
Do you have an aggressive personality?
Are you taking medicines or drugs?
Do you stay irritable?
Are you suffering from depression?
Do you communicate poorly?
Do you lack problem-solving skills?
Are you too stressed?
Are you too judgemental?
Are you too much into blame?
Are you constantly exhausted?
Who’s around to help and support you?
Is your life seriously out of balance?
Chapter 3: Is Anger Damaging Your Life?
Draining Your Energy
Making You Ill
How anger indirectly affects your health
How anger directly affects your health
Reviewing the anger–health checklist
Sabotaging Your Career
Getting off-track early
Heading in the wrong direction
Asking the wrong question
Engaging in unhelpful work behaviour
Ruining Your Marriage
Affecting Those You Care About
Part II: Dealing with Past and Present Anger
Chapter 4: Taking Immediate Action
Drawing the Line – the Sooner the Better
Settling for Just Being Irritated
Understanding Why Your Fuse Is So Short
Lengthening Your Fuse
Walking away – but coming back
Giving the other person the last word
Knowing That Sometimes It Pays to Feel Guilty
Seeing How Distraction Works
Changing your situation – getting some distance
Stopping the rumination
Using imagery to transcend anger
Chapter 5: Avoiding Speaking Out in Anger
Stopping Ranting
Expressing Your Anger Effectively
Talking versus hitting
Writing versus speaking
Leaving out the four-letter words
Staying focused
Keeping it short – and breathing
It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Say It
Chapter 6: Keeping Your Cool
Choosing to Respond Rather Than React
Breaking your lifelong habits of reacting to anger
Avoiding the company of other angerholics
Assessing Your Anger
Being Patient
Controlling Your Body
Using the relaxation response
Harnessing the power of quiet
Lightening up
Talking to yourself
Asking Yourself Four Crucial Questions
Who am I really angry at?
Is this where I want to be angry?
Why am I angry?
Is the intensity of my anger at this moment consistent with why I’m angry?
Weighing Up Your Options
Always giving yourself three ways to go
Considering the consequences of each response
Choosing not to always exercise your right to be angry
Taking action: responding
Rewarding Yourself
Chapter 7: Letting Go of Past Anger
Digging Yourself Out of Anger
Knowing that resistance equals persistence
Identifying the fears that hold you back
Being nice doesn’t mean being powerless
Hiding your anger but making others suffer
Seeing who hangs on and who lets go
Trying the ten-minute rant
Living without Resolution
Time’s Up: Knowing When to Let Go
Chapter 8: Moving Forward: The Power of Forgiveness
Knowing that Forgiveness Is Never Easy
You need time
You need support
You need to sacrifice
Choosing to Forgive
You have to be safe
You have to acknowledge the frailty of human nature
Doing a Cost–Benefit Analysis
Who are you letting off the hook?
Do you deserve to be happy?
Accepting the Finality of Being Wronged
You don’t have to forget the past
Choosing pain over anger
Part III: Preventing Future Anger
Chapter 9: Adopting a New Outlook
Seeing that Anger Is In the Interpretation
Understanding why it’s called ‘blind’ rage
Choosing the lesser of two evils
Accepting Life for What It Is, Not What It Should Be
Becoming More Tolerant
Re-thinking your approach
Seeking diversity in all things
Considering the media’s effect on you
Figuring Out Where Hostility and Resentment Come From
Being Assertive
Chapter 10: Saying What You Mean
Seeing Why Hiding Your Emotions Isn’t Healthy
Realising there’s no such thing as hidden anger
Noting that dissatisfaction can be lethal
Being Civil Doesn’t Always Mean Being Nice
Stop saying ‘I’m fine’ when you’re not
Stop saying ‘I never get angry’
Stop apologising for what others do
Expressing your anger without worrying that you’re being stroppy
Having Feelings Rather Than Issues
Walking Away and Still Having Your Say
Chapter 11: Owning Up to Your Anger
Owning Up: It’s Good for You
Seeing Who Can Benefit from Owning Up
Men in general
Women who cry a lot
People who are prone to guilt
People who are too empathic
People who are hostile
Introverts
People who’ve suffered a lot of trauma
People who are chronically ill
Young people
Understanding the Difference Between a Diary and a Journal
Telling Your Story Your Way
Making yourself the audience
Using the first person
Relaxing about grammar
Focusing on the negative
Finding the cause of your feelings
Writing until time is up
Preventing emotions from getting in the way of writing
Suspending judgement
Sticking to pen and pencil
Finding a quiet place
Chapter 12: Balancing the Effects of Your Temperament
Recognising Your Style: Temperament and Anger
Aggressive styles
Passive styles
Moving Beyond Your Temperament
Becoming assertive
Not excusing yourself (‘It’s just the way I am’)
Focusing on who you are, rather than what you do
Looking at your own competitive streak
Taking off your watch
Acquiring Wisdom
Seeking diversity in relationships
Developing better social skills
Letting yourself be curious
Chapter 13: Using Anger Constructively
Making Anger Your Friend
Anger is a built-in capacity
Anger is invigorating
Anger serves as a starting point for new behaviour
Anger communicates
Anger protects you from harm
Anger is an antidote to impotence
Exploring the Motives Behind Your Anger
Bringing about a positive change
Seeking revenge
Letting off steam
Using Anger to Understand Yourself
Moving Towards Constructive Anger
Step 1: Decide how you want to feel after you get angry
Step 2: Acknowledge your anger
Step 3: Focus your anger on the problem, not the person
Step 4: Identify the source of the problem
Step 5: Accept that you can solve the problem
Step 6: Try to see things from the other person’s perspective
Step 7: Get the other person involved
Step 8: Keep a civil tone throughout
Step 9: Avoid disrespectful behaviour
Step 10: Don’t be afraid to take time out and resume the discussion later
Step 11: Make it a two-way conversation
Step 12: Acknowledge that you’ve made progress
What Goes Around Comes Around
Part IV: Lifestyle Changes That Improve Your Anger and Health
Chapter 14: Managing Daily Stresses
Distinguishing Stress from Strain
Staying Away from Stress Carriers
Identifying the Sources of Your Stress
Knowing Which Types of Stress Are Toxic
Cumulative stress
Chronic stress
Catastrophic stress
Control stress
Avoiding Burnout
Discovering How to Be Hardy
Being the master of your own destiny
Being a player, not a spectator
Transforming catastrophes into challenges
Coping with Stress: What Works and What Doesn’t
Chapter 15: Managing Your Body Chemistry
Just Because It’s Legal Doesn’t Make It Healthy
Keeping Track of Your Substance Use
Counting Your Caffeine
Eliminating Your Favourite Cigarette
Adopting a New Drinking Style
Letting the Impulse Pass
Chapter 16: Getting a Good Night’s Sleep
Understanding What Sleep Does for You
Knowing How Much Is Enough
Rating the Quality of Your Sleep
Improving the Quality of Your Sleep
Listening to your body
Getting physical
Avoiding stimulants
Setting up a pre-sleep routine
Creating a positive sleep environment
Eliminating competing cues
Distancing yourself from work
Uncluttering your mind
Getting into a good rhythm
Considering sleeping pills
Coping with sleepless children
Chapter 17: Looking After Your Spiritual Health
Reaching Up Rather than Out
Seeing How Anger Can Choke Faith
Using Faith to Help You Fight On
Praying Prayers of Gratitude
Practising Compassion
Being Humble – It Helps
Having a Blessed Day
Chapter 18: Staying in a Good Mood
Eliminating the Negative: Maintaining a Positive Mood
Laughter really is the best medicine
Hanging around with optimists
Finding the good in the bad
Calculating your positivity ratio
Realising When Your Mood Becomes a Problem
Exploring the Anger–Depression Link
Seeing how depression can make you angry
Separating depression and grief
Fixing the Problem
Taking antidepressants
Talking as a cure: Psychotherapy
Healing through exercise
Finding hope
Part V: Managing Anger in Relationships
Chapter 19: At Work
Recognising Unhelpful Work Behaviour
Avoidance versus aggression
Person versus organisation
Knowing Who’s Likely to Have Problems with Anger at Work
The fed-up employee
The self-centred employee
Improving Your Negotiating Skills
Creating a Positive Work Climate
Making Politeness the Norm
Speaking Up, Not Out
Chapter 20: At Home and In Intimate Relationships
It Takes Two: Avoiding Angry Dialogues
Managing Anger From the Top Down
Choosing the Unfamiliar: Changing Your Family’s Patterns
Looking at Your Parenting Style
The Power of One Small Step
One meal a day
One evening a week
One day a month
One week a year
Making it work
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Chapter 21: Ten Ways to Raise a Child to Have Healthy Anger Control
Being an Emotional Coach
Starting Early and Talking Back
Creating Educating Moments
Being a Positive Role Model
Putting the ‘I’ in Emotion
Labelling Feelings Appropriately
Identifying Causes
Teaching Problem Solving
Choosing the Third Alternative
Understanding the Difference Between Wanting and Getting
Chapter 22: Ten Anger-Freeing Thoughts
No One – Absolutely No One – Can Make You Angry Without Your Consent
Anger Comes Back to You – And So Does Love
It’s Only Money
Other People Are Not the Enemy
Life Isn’t Fair – Not Even at the Top
Energy Is a Terrible Thing to Waste
We’re Only Human
This Isn’t the Time for War
There’s Nothing You Can Achieve With Anger That You Can’t Achieve Without It
When You’re Dealing With People, You’re Not Entitled to Anything!
Chapter 23: Ten Anger-Freeing Actions
Counting to Ten
Coming Down from Anger, Fast
Letting Anger Evaporate
Treating Others As You Want to Be Treated
Controlling Your Voice
Minding Your Body Language
Getting the Right Kind of Attention
Putting the Brakes on Boozing
Accepting Apologies – And Making Them
Keeping Control for As Long As It Takes
by Gillian Bloxham and W. Doyle Gentry, PhD
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My thanks are also due to the many people who have shared their struggles with anger with me, and to Elaine, Mark and Neil for their steadfast support.
The folks at Wiley were fantastic. I deeply appreciate their professionalism, expertise, encouragement, and, most of all, patience during both the acquisition and editorial phases of the project. The energy and passion associated with the For Dummies series is, indeed, infectious.
And, as always, I want to thank my loving family – Catherine, Rebecca and Chris – for yet another show of support for my life’s work. They never disappoint.
Basically, we are all dummies when it comes to anger management – a field that remains a work in progress. I learn more every day about ways to harness this complicated and, at times, troublesome emotion, and being able to share this education with my readers is a pleasure. If this book changes the life of a single person for the better, then I am satisfied that the hard work that went into it was worthwhile.
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.
Introduction
Anger is a natural part of life – one of the rainbow of emotions all humans feel and recognise. Anger is also a reaction that’s built into your nervous system – a survival mechanism intended to keep you safe. No one chooses to be angry. In fact, anger is one of the first emotions mothers recognise in their newborn infants. So, it’s never too early to start anger management.
On the other hand, the way you manage anger is down to you – your responsibility and your choice. You don’t have to be a victim of your own anger – you can choose how you respond when the world doesn’t treat you the way you want it to. You have just as much choice about how you express your anger as you do about what colour shirt you wear, what you eat for breakfast, or who you choose to be friends with. You also have a choice about how much of yesterday’s anger you carry into the future and how you react to anger you may feel tomorrow. If we didn’t believe that, we wouldn’t have spent so many years of our professional lives working with people making those choices!
No one is exempt from problematic anger. Anger is a very democratic emotion – it causes problems for men and women, kids and the elderly, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, people of all cultures and ethnic backgrounds, believers and nonbelievers. Tens of millions of human beings needlessly suffer from what we call unhealthy anger – anger that literally destroys happiness in life – each and every day of their lives.
Anger isn’t something that can – or should be – cured. But you have to manage it well – at home, at work, and in your most intimate relationships – if you want to benefit from it. Anger Management For Dummies tells you how to manage your anger by focusing on the positive – how to get a good night’s sleep, how to change your perspective on life, why owning up is better for you than ranting, how to turn conflicts into challenges, and much more. Anger management has moved far beyond the simplistic (if well-intentioned) advice of years ago to ‘count to ten’ or take a couple of deep breaths every time you get angry – and that’s good news!
About This Book
How do you know when you have too much anger? Do you determine that for yourself, or do you let other people make that call? If you’re not physically aggressive – physically hurting other people or punching holes in walls – does that mean you’re not angry? Does it really help to rant, to get things off your chest, or are you better off keeping your mouth shut in order to keep the peace? Can angry people really change, or do they have to go through life suffering because that’s just the way they are? And what should you do if you’re on the wrong end of someone else’s anger? These are all important questions that Anger Management For Dummies answers for you.
When we wrote Anger Management For Dummies, we had four basic goals in mind:
We wanted to show you that anger is more than a four-letter word – it’s an extremely complex emotion that has meaning well beyond the crude and hurtful words people use to express it. Understanding all about anger is the foundation of anger management.
We wanted to illustrate all the various ways that anger can – and does – negatively affect your life when it occurs too frequently, is too intense and lasts too long.
We wanted to explain that anger management occurs in three distinct time frames – yesterday, today and tomorrow. The strategies we propose to manage anger will, of course, differ depending on whether you’re trying to let go of some old anger, deal with the anger you face today, or prevent anger that you’re otherwise likely to experience tomorrow.
We wanted to show you that managing anger is something that is entirely within your power – and not something you have to seek professional help for – if you’re willing to make the necessary lifestyle changes outlined in this book. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how long anger has been a part of your life – it’s never too late to manage your anger better.
Anger Management For Dummies isn’t one of those 12-step books where you have to read (and follow the advice) of Step 1 before you can proceed to Step 2, and so on. It’s a resource book containing all the information we have at our disposal after our combined experience of six decades of combined clinical practice with clients and scientific research on anger management. You don’t have to start with Chapter 1 and read straight through to the end of the book. You can look at the Table of Contents, find something that interests you, and start there. You may want to focus on the area in which you’re having the most trouble controlling your temper – with family, for example. Or you may want to head straight for a chapter on managing stress (one of the most common causes of anger). We’re not even suggesting that you read the whole book – that’s up to you.
Conventions Used in This Book
We didn’t want Anger Management For Dummies to be yet another book written by psychologists for psychologists. This book is for everyone who wants to lead their life without anger interfering, so we’ve eliminated all the professional jargon, and used terms and ideas that we know work with the many different people we’ve met.
We’ve also tried to make reading Anger Management For Dummies an enjoyable experience. Just because anger is a serious topic doesn’t mean that you need to approach it with a deadly serious attitude. If you can enjoy learning something new, you’re more likely to remember it, and to follow it through!
Most important, Anger Management For Dummies is full of stories about people just like you, who have successfully overcome their difficulties with anger – even a lifetime of anger. The people you’ll read about are combinations of many relatives, friends and clients we’ve known over the years, who’ve taught us what truly works for healthy anger management. The quotations and dialogues included in these stories are based on our memories of conversations we have had.
You don’t have to know psychology to understand this book. But we do use a couple of conventions:
When we introduce a new term, we put the word in italics and define it shortly thereafter (usually in parentheses).
When we list an email or web address, we use a special font called monofont so you know exactly what to type.
And that’s it!
Foolish Assumptions
We made a few assumptions about you when writing this book:
You may or may not have a problem with anger – but if you don’t have a problem with anger yourself, you know or love someone who does. If you didn’t buy this book for yourself, you bought it for your husband, wife, brother, sister, son, daughter, father, mother, friend or work colleague. Or one of those people bought it for you.
You don’t want to know everything there is to know about anger – you just want to know what you need to know to manage anger effectively. Scientists have studied anger for years, but you won’t find a list of scientific jargon in these pages. We focus on proven strategies to help you manage your anger, and that’s it.
You’re probably looking for useful information and hints about how to change. We’ve laid this book out to make it simple to find what you’re interested in, using the understanding we’ve developed through working with people facing exactly the same challenges. All of the information and examples you see have already worked for others – we hope you’ll find in the following chapters those that work for you.
How This Book Is Organised
We’ve organised Anger Management For Dummies into six parts and 23 chapters. You can also find an online Cheat Sheet for quick prompts to deal with focused problems (see inside the front cover for the web address). Here’s what you can find in each part.
Part I: The Basics of Anger
In the first three chapters, we acquaint you with some basic facts about anger as a natural human emotion, the role that emotions like anger play in your life, and help you decide whether anger is poisoning your health, work or relationships. Chapter 2 shows you how to measure your anger and distinguish between healthy and unhealthy or destructive anger. We want you to be free to decide how to respond to anger (and situations that trigger it) instead of just reacting in a knee-jerk way that almost always takes you somewhere you really don’t want to go.
Part II: Dealing with Past and Present Anger
In this part, we help you tackle the challenge of managing anger in the moment. Most people get into trouble simply because they don’t know what to else to do – apart from what they already know – when they begin to feel anger build up. In effect, it’s what you don’t know (for example, that all emotions are temporary) and don’t do (for example, let the other person have the last word) that leads to anger mismanagement. Chapter 6 offers you a structured, multistep, effective method you can use to keep your cool.
If you’re like either of us, you have found yourself getting much angrier than the situation you’re in requires. You’re left with the question: ‘What on earth got into me?’ Chances are you were influenced by some old anger you were unaware of at that moment that was just waiting for an opportunity to express itself. In Chapter 7 we offer some tips on how not to let today’s anger become tomorrow’s anger – strategies such as ‘time’s up!’ and the ten-minute rant. In Chapter 8 we get into the details of achieving forgiveness as applied to anger management. We’re not looking at forgiveness in a spiritual sense here, but rather as a tool for letting go of anger from the past that is no longer helpful and is long past its sell by date.
Part III: Preventing Future Anger
Chapters 9 to 12 show you ways to deal with anger before it happens. Stepping in early is a new approach – most anger-management strategies are designed to work after the situation has started to get out of hand. We believe it’s more difficult (and sometimes feels impossible) to use the techniques and ideas for healthy anger management when you’re in the middle of a rage! Preventing anger can be the most exciting aspect of anger management. In this part, we also talk about mental outlook (attitudes you learn and carry with you in your life), which influence what you expect and will tolerate from the world around you, why it’s essential to stop disguising your anger and just say what you feel (but politely!), how to own up to yourself about your anger, how to become the type of person who doesn’t trigger so much anger, and – perhaps most important – how you can use your anger positively. If you can make anger a positive influence, you no longer have to attempt to avoid it.
Part IV: Lifestyle Changes That Improve Your Anger and Health
We both believe that living a healthy lifestyle enormously improves your chances of not getting angry. Why? Because many hundreds of people that we’ve met and worked with, and tens of thousands of others, know through experience that treating your body well helps to steady body-based emotions like anger. In this part, we show you how unhealthy anger is a by-product of an unhealthy lifestyle. If you’re on the verge of stress burnout, if your daily diet consists mainly of caffeine and alcohol (with some nicotine thrown in for good measure!), if your life is all out of balance (too much work, too little play), if you never get a good night’s sleep, if you carry the whole world on your shoulders (unsupported by others or by spiritual faith), and if you’re utterly depressed or feel hopeless, why on earth wouldn’t you be angry? Change those things and you’ll see some major changes in how angry you are.
Part V: Managing Anger in Relationships
Most of us sort our day-to-day lives into areas where we spend the most time – work, home and in intimate relationships. These two chapters are designed to address anger-management issues that are situation specific – what works at work doesn’t necessarily work at home. The benefit of having an honest and personal discussion with family in an effort to reduce conflict may not be useful in a meeting with your bosses. Both chapters in this section offer a set of strategies aimed at turning hostility into harmony.
Part VI: The Part of Tens
If you’re looking for quick ideas about how to raise a child with healthy anger balance, or you want some easy-to-remember anger-freeing thoughts or actions, you can find them here.
Icons Used in This Book
Icons are those little pictures in the margins throughout this book, and they’re there to draw your attention to certain kinds of information:
We highlight case studies with this icon, as personal stories are often really useful for illustrating a point. (We don’t use real names (apart from our own) to protect our patients’ identities.)
This icon alerts you to important ideas and concepts that you might want to remember and that you can use even when you don’t have Anger Management For Dummies to hand.
Every once in a while, we talk about scientific research, as a lot of very useful knowledge about anger and human behaviour comes from psychological and biological research scientists. When we do, we mark the paragraph with this icon. You can read these paragraphs if you want, but the information they contain isn’t essential to your understanding of the topic.
The Tip icon suggests practical how-to strategies for managing anger. You can even transfer the ones you find useful to a card to keep with you.
This icon appears when we have words of caution for you, or when we suggest you may need to seek professional help.
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Each part and chapter in this book is meant to stand alone in its discussion of anger management. Just choose a topic that interests you, and dive in.
If you do read Anger Management For Dummies thoroughly and you still find that you’re struggling with anger, we suggest you seriously consider getting the help of a professional. There’s no shame in this – seeking help for habits that cause difficulties is the most common reason to talk to someone independent. Anger management is a specialist field and you need to find someone who has qualifications and expertise in this area. If you’re interested in a medical remedy for abnormal anger – one that focuses on prescribed medication – you need to find a psychiatrist (a qualified doctor who specialises in mental health) who specialises in this area. If you’re more open to psychotherapeutic strategies (where change results from an interpersonal relationship between you and a therapist), look for a chartered clinical psychologist, cognitive therapist or mental health professional. Either way, be sure to get the help you need. A book like this wouldn’t exist if you were the only person who feels this way!